Deep Dive Sessions

MIDWINTER 2016 Deep dive sessions

Advance registration is required for Deep Dive sessionsl. To receive CEUs, a participant must attend the entire course and complete a post-session evaluation. Each session is $95 per attendee and requires Midwinter registration—at minimum for an exhibits-only pass—and can be purchased through the Midwinter Registration site.

To register for any of these events, you can include them with your initial registration or add them later using the unique link in your email confirmation. If you don't have your registration confirmation handy, you can request a copy by emailing alaregistration@compusystems.com.

We Are All User Experience Librarians: Creating Change From the Trenches

Saturday, January 9, 2016, 1:00pm-4:15pm

Event Code: DIVE3

A workshop with a mix of discussion, individual presentations, panel presentations, and interactive experiences. The workshop will focus on user testing and understanding your user.

The workshop will focus on user testing and understanding your users. It will be aimed at participants with no or limited experience in user testing and with limited budgets. Courtney Greene McDonald (Indiana University) will be the lead presenter and will begin the workshop with an overview of the need for user testing and general principles of user experience design. Pete Coco (Weave: The Journal of Library User Experience and Boston Public Library), Deirdre Costello (EBSCO), Lauren McKeen (Northwestern University) , and Heidi Steiner Burkhardt (University of Michigan), will then provide 20 to 30 minute sessions featuring the following design strategies and tools:
● General principles of User Experience Design
● Identifying a need for user testing
● Writing for the Web
● Content Strategy
● Stakeholder assessments
● User journeys

The session will also include a panel discussion led by the presenters focused on pitfalls and lessons learned. Relevance: User testing is extremely important for libraries trying to build the right services for their communities and prove their value on a budget. The skills taught in this workshop will help attendees collect data to make sure they’re spending resources in the right places and demonstrate both need and value.
Learning exercises will include:
● Identifying characteristics of users
● Drafting voice and tone guidelines
● Developing hypotheses about optimizing content
● Identifying methods for testing content
● Writing a short letter about an experience
● Creating a simple usability test
● Writing and giving an elevator pitch advocating for user-centered strategies at their library

All communities have challenges. Libraries can help conquer them — given the right tools. Learn how two mid-sized, urban public libraries—Hartford (Conn.) Public Library and Springfield (Mass.) City Library—are bringing residents, local organizations and city leaders together to tackle daunting issues, including public safety. In Hartford, the library has convened a task force to improve relations between residents and police in the city’s underserved North End; in Springfield, the library has partnered with a nonprofit to offer trainings in nonviolent conflict resolution. And that’s just the beginning.

In this Deep Dive session, representatives from both libraries will explain how they adopted and adapted the “turning outward” approach, created by The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, to meet their communities’ unique and changing needs. Participants will learn about the “turning outward” approach through interactive exercises; discuss mid-course corrections and outcomes assessments; and hear real-world examples of how community engagement can change the perspective of libraries and their role in their communities.

Participants will undertake a selection of hands-on NASA activities that are designed to engage children and their families in the library environment. Inexpensive, common (and even recycled) materials will be used to investigate our solar system. Actively explore a scale model of the solar system in the activity, "Jump to Jupiter," where children jump through a course from the grapefruit “Sun,” past poppy seed “Earth,” and on to wooden bead “Jupiter.” Other activities will highlight creations that children take home to extend the learning with their families and peers.

Participants will receive guides to upcoming celestial, Earth, and NASA mission events. For example, International Observe the Moon Night (InOMN) is an annual world-wide public engagement event–reaching 50 countries and 45 U.S. states per year– that uses the Earth’s Moon as an entryway to learning about NASA’s contributions to planetary science and exploration. InOMN is meant to be easy to participate in, since no special equipment is needed to observe the Moon. Participants will learn how to bring these, and other connections to our world and space exploration, to their libraries’ communities. They will take home one- page guides designed specifically for library staff, families, and teachers relating to events in the coming year. The guides provide facts and resources to help library patrons celebrate the exploration of our world and the solar system in the library, at home, and at school.

Discussions will highlight how NASA resources can be used to connect with the community, to the nation, and beyond. Participants will walk away with information about connecting with potential partners, including members of NASA’s Night Sky Network and Solar System Ambassadors